Current Events that Relate to History
Recently Published
View AllOriginal features and excerpts of new books
-
Features
AI Is an Anti-Primary Source Machine
Real voices from the past are threatened by chatbots designed to amplify — and ultimately become — the loudest voices in the room. -
Features
Regime Change
A coin featuring the likeness of President Trump doesn’t have many precedents in American history. The ancient Roman opponents of Julius Caesar could explain why. -
Features
How “History” Became Central at the Supreme Court
Originalists and historians use the past to accomplish very different tasks.
In the Newsletter
View All EditionsCurated collections that explore a different theme each week
-
DispatchRichmond’s Last Monuments
A look at the fate of three Confederate monuments in Richmond's Capitol Square, which were relocated in August 2026.The Civil War Monitor -
idea
Veterans Day
-
Book ReviewThe Telephone’s Tangled History of Intimacy and Control
Tracing how an invention that brought distant voices close rewrote the rules of conversation and raised an unsettling question: Who else might be listening?The New Yorker -
RetrievalHow MIT Trained the Shah’s Nuclear Engineers
In 1975, the university trained dozens of Iranians handpicked by the monarch, leading to a campus fight over who should get the technology, and at what price.New Lines -
ComparisonOur New Deal Moment
Democrats swept the 1930 midterms—but it was what FDR did next that mattered most. Here’s what today’s progressives can learn from his example.Democracy Journal -
LongreadBurying the Evidence
The future doesn’t care about your time capsule, but don’t let that stop you.Longreads -
exhibitThe Lives of War Veterans
The experiences of veterans of American wars, from the Civil War to Afghanistan, and our collective obligation to those who have served.